view issue - PrimeTime Cape Cod

COntinuED frOm PAGE 10
Most of David’s work comes from
word of mouth and takes place in
Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Dennis
and Orleans. Last year, he did work
on the Chatham police department
and fire station. He does all the work
for the Chatham Wayside Inn and the
Bradford Hotel, also in Chatham. His
company is doing interior work on
a house under construction near the
Falmouth Airpark. He just finished up
the Barley Neck Inn in Orleans.
“That building was really old,” David
says. “We had to strip all the old
paint. The new laws say you have to
be certified to remove lead paint.”
David and his foremen took an
eight-hour course in Braintree so
they’re certified to do lead removal.
“They explained the proper way of
de-leading, making sure that there’s
no lead paint on the ground when
you’re done,” David says. “It costs a
little more to do a house when it has
lead paint.”
The son of a painter, David is a
native Cape Codder, living in Eastham
for the first nine years of his life.
The family moved
❝
If the customer’s
not happy, I go
back and I make
sure they get happy.
to Martha’s Vineyard
for four years,
but he was mostly
raised in the Dennis-
Yarmouth area. He
graduated from
Cape Cod Regional
Technical High
School in 1982.
David’s wife,
Candace, does the
bookkeeping for the
company. She also
works at Chatham
Town Hall as the assessor’s clerk.
David has two sons from a previous
marriage; the younger, 20-year-old
Daniel, has been painting with his
father for a couple of years, and the
older, who now lives in Florida, used
to work with his dad.
David is a big Celtics fan. He also
likes to go out to dinner with his wife,
trying different Cape restaurants.
“We like to get away at least once
a year,” he says. “Two months ago I
bought a 32-foot sleeper trailer. Basically,
we can put it at a campsite in
the summertime, in Truro or Wellfleet.
We can go there for the weekends and
camp out.”
David had a special house-washing
machine made for him by a company
in Tennessee. “I invested about $8,900
for it,” he says. “It’s different. Nobody
on the Cape has that machine. It’s a
DAVID COOk, OWNER
COOkIE’S pAINTINg
Quickhits
WebLinks
Cookie’s Painting
www.cookiespainting.com
low-pressure system,” he explains.
He prefers a low-pressure system
because a power washer can burn or
damage shingles. “I do have a highpressure
power washer that’s built
onto the machine,” he says, “but I only
use it to clean mold and mildew from
concrete and decks. Basically you take
a house with old-looking shingles and
when I’m done washing, it looks like
it was just re-shingled.”
David is serious about satisfying
his customers. “If the customer’s not
happy, I go back and I make sure they
get happy, before I go on to the next
job,” he says. “We don’t start a job and
then go to another job. We do a job
start to finish. The reason why a lot of
people like my business is we don’t
tie up the place for weeks on end. I’ve
got a big enough crew that we come
in, get it done and get out. They’re not
in a mess or shambles
for too long. We try to
put everything back for
everybody, so everything’s
neat.”
When he’s painting
or staining a house, he
might notice rot, such
as in the attic vents.
He brings such damage
to the owner’s
attention and, with
his carpenters on the
team, is prepared to fix
the problem. He says
his carpentry rates are
$25 to $30 an hour. “It’s pretty costeffective
to have a house painted. You
can do an average house for anywhere
from $3,000 up to $10,000, depending
on the size and how many stories
high it is,” says David.
“Sometimes, when I do an interior,
they want this done, that done, it
might be a little more. I’ll give them
an hourly rate, so that we don’t lose,
either one of us, hourly plus materials.
Most of my prices are a contract price,
a flat price. I need a third down on all
my work and the rest on completion
and satisfaction.”
The hardest part of a paint job
is proper preparation, David says.
“That’s the sanding, puttying, caulking,
making sure everything’s done
right,” he says.
PlEAsE sEE PaInTIng, page 12
PRIMETIMECAPECOD.com 11